


Forgotten pages

by WahlBuilder



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Gen, One-Sided Attraction, Pre-Series, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-09-20 01:45:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9470060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: Liege Maximo muses about Megatronus.





	

There was a low din that poured into Liege Maximo’s frame, soothing him, cradling him like the subsonic hum in the depths of Cybertron where the presence of Primus was more prominent. His weary processor had shut down most of its functions to conserve energy, and some deep subroutine had sent Maximo on a familiar way to a destination that he had long incorporated into his code, marking it as ‘safe’.

He onlined his optics, swept most of the warnings about low fuel off the HUD, and looked around. And smiled.

He was alone, and nobody could see him, so, in his moment of weakness, he allowed himself a genuine smile.

Around him, at the points of a perfect hexagon, giant towers reached to the sky, each as far away from Liege Maximo as all others. In the mids of jagged dentae on their tops, flames were burning with a thoughtful hum Liege Maximo could hear even from his position so far below them. The flames cast the sky ablaze with many colours that had no names yet.

The towers were the great energon refineries, where the essence of Primus—of Cybertron—was received from the six plentiful wells and pumped and pushed and run through various filters to purify it from slag it could accumulate on its way from the core of the planet to the surface, and provide the singing fuel—the essence of life.

The towers themselves had no completeness of Solus’s work—always as much a piece of art as a piece of careful engineering—nor did they have the clean, pristine precision of Prima’s artefacts. They were dangerous, and if not for the tight control, they would have been too dangerous. Their sides—sloping, scarred, uneven—gleamed and shimmered with rainbow burn marks—stark reminders of the early days where their power had not been so severely controlled.

In essence, they were like the one who had erected them. And just like him, once in a few cycles a heavy storm gathered over the tops of the towers, cracking, growling, thundering, but never breaking, and waning before the cycle was over.

Nowhere else Liege Maximo would rather be.

He began trudging where he could walk completely sensor-blind, too tired to assume his alt-mode, but the sensation of movement was faded, concealed by the din, and judder, and growling of the towers, their tips, coruscating, throwing the bodies of the towers into darkness by contrast.

Everything about the scenery, so raw, unrefined despite the processes that carried on in the towers, reminded Maximo about Megatronus.

The low, subsonic rolling growl of the refineries that travelled through the ground and air alike and into Maximo’s hidden, inner structures, was the growl of Megatronus’s mighty engine. 

The ground-shaking pulsation of heavy machinery, of pumps and couterweights, and pistons, and autohammers was the steps of Megatronus.

No other place Liege Maximo would rather be.

It was chaos being constantly reshaped into cosmos, just as Megatronus was redefining himself every step of the way. Prima took pride in always being in control of his environments and of himself, but how much pride could be taken when you needn't to put any effort in staying in control, when you needn't to struggle and suffer and emerge victorious, again and again and again?

Amalgamous would have appreciated the beautiful synergy, the dissolution and solidification and breaking of the elements, though they were not elements of the matter, but rather morals, thoughts, desires, inclinations, instincts... In that, Megatronus was not unlike the beginning of their function where all were one, and only,—a consciousness curious about itself, and thus splitting and dividing, fretful and reckless. He was not unlike Unicron.

Maximo did not find any shame or ill in that. When there was no change, there was only stillness of un-function—and wasn't it ironic that Prima, who thought so highly of himself, who seemed to think that he stood above them all, was unchanging, and arrogant in it?

Such musings occupying most of Maximo’s dregs of processing power that he had left, his pedes carried him beyond the hexagonal space of the refineries and to the outskirts where Megatronus’s place of abode stood.

It was close enough to the refineries for Megatronus to swiftly reach them had anything happened—and far away enough for his chosen home to survive had anything happened to the towers.

The planes beyond the refineries were ragged and empty and raw, the refineries a monument of cosmos amidst the chaos. But the ground was flat enough for Maximo to not have any trouble moving.

Megatronus’s domicile could be taken for a cluster of metal nuggets, so undefined it was. The metal was dull and shimmered rainbow at the edges where the fires atop the refinery towers played from afar. The whole structure, huge and squat and armed with sharp dentae of Megatronus himself looked like a kindred of the towers, shunned out of their midst long ago and not given an opportunity to grow as tall as they were.

Maximo looked down and smiled, stepping into the marks of Megatronus's heavy and much bigger steps, leading in and out of the clusters of nuggets that he chose as his home.

Here, the pulsation of the esoteric workings of the towers was not as juddering. But maybe, Maximo hoped, the rumble of a different kind would await him there.

He hoped, and knew that Megatronus was elsewhere as of right then.

With Solus, most likely.

Ah, sweet Solus Prime. Her Forge, the mightiest instrument of creation. Her skills, the inescapable necessity of peace. Her words, a loyal promise of friendship.

What wouldn’t Maximo give to have Megatronus look at him the way Megatronus looked at her. But at times when Megatronus walked away from Solus smiling, at peace with the world and, most importantly, with himself, a lightness to his step, a quietness to his voice, Maximo couldn’t feel bad about it. As long as Solus made Megatronus happy, it was enough.

Liege Maximo entered Megatronus’s place, the noise of the land immediately cut off by the thick walls that were as uneven inside as they were on the outside. The place inside was divided into zones only barely. Various tools—small hammers, tongs, levers, counterweights,—in different need of repair were everywhere, sometimes forming neat but failing piles, sometimes put down without any logic to it. It was a perfect scenery of struggle for order, for control—for cosmos. And chaos was retaking it every single moment, and cosmos was enforced again and again and again.

Braziers blazed as Maximo entered, alarmed by sensors, but Maximo overrode the command and dimmed them again, his optics too exhausted. 

In the corner, tucked between a broken generator, whose innards were obscenely exposed, and something that forced Maximo to think about an anvil clenched in enormous claws, tucked as if in an afterthought, was Megatronus’s berth. That it was a berth Maximo knew only from memory logs and experience, not from the current looks of it, buried under the mess of blankets, designs drawn in Solus’s uneven lines, and a few cups with last drops of energon glowing like gems within.

Maximo moved the pile on the floor, keeping only the blanket, lay down on the berth which was too big for his frame, but familiar and therefore comfortable, and covered himself with the blanket. It was rather cold to his tastes, but he didn’t have the energy to spare on adjusting his inner temperature, and so, lulled by the distant hum and rolling pulsation of machinery, he fell into recharge, background processes occupied with Megatronus.

Some part of him that remained alert in case of emergency took some data from those processes, and the groundshaking pulsation seemed to move closer, closer, like Megatronus’s steps, and in the recharge he recognised the slightly unbalanced gait, as if Megatronus had difficulty remembering how to walk and had to consciously force his frame to make motions that were instinctive to all others.

The steps stopped, then the outer temperature began rising by notches, and it was definitely not the bits of files that his processor snatched and fed him during recharge. Maximo onlined his optics.

Megatronus was moving more softly, picking this and that and rearranging it, battling the eternal entropy of his home. The sensors on Maximo’s armour pinged him with data, marking the increased weight on his frame—he was covered by additional layers of blankets that he had no recollection of pulling on top of himself.

‘Go back to recharge,’ rumbled Megatronus, and one blazing optic glanced at Maximo.

He smiled. ‘You don’t mind?’

Megatronus’s engine hummed, more powerful than the hum of the towers, as he kept picking and arranging things. ‘You always ask, and my answer stays the same. If I minded, you wouldn’t be here. Now recharge. We’ve work to do.’ He revved his great engine, and at first Maximo didn’t know how to process that. Megatronus’s words indicated that he wasn’t angry, so why would he—

But as the sound touched and caressed Maximo’s various sensors, he realised that this was Megatronus’s way of putting him into recharge.

And so he settled, comforted and content, and put into hibernation most of his processes.

If Megatronus was content and at peace with himself, it was enough. It was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a theory that the nightmare that happened to the Thirteen is partially because Maximo was jealous of Solus having Megatronus's affections.


End file.
